Godly heathens, p.4
Godly Heathens, page 4
Oh.
It’s … spooky. She’s super creepy, which I’m pretty sure is what she’s going for.
But I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to all of that. And as intimidating as she’s trying to be, I’m more weirded out than afraid. I raise my free hand and wiggle my fingers in her face. “Ooooooh.”
“You’re … mocking me.” Poppy blinks. And then, unexpectedly, she laughs. “You always have a sense of humor. It’s one of your many charms.”
“I— Thank you?”
“Now, Magician.” She sighs, tilting her head back. She’s so thin I think for a minute it might just snap right off her neck and go rolling around the parking lot. “Where’s the Ouroboros?”
Magician. Ouroboros.
Now I’m more worried my head might go spinning off.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” How many times can I say that today?
She tilts her head in the other direction, thin hair falling over her face, narrowing her eyes. After a beat, she asks, “Pinky swear?”
This girl is a freak. I stick out my pinky out.
“Pity.” Poppy clicks her front teeth and does not twist our fingers together. “Marian’s going to be so upset.”
“Who?”
The question has barely left my mouth before I stop breathing.
Just stop. I can’t suck in air, and I don’t know why. It’s like someone’s flipped a switch and my lungs don’t know how to inflate anymore. I try to breathe, and my body doesn’t respond, like that part of me is just … off.
Poppy’s hand glides from my chest to curl around my throat. “In this lifetime, battle follows death. She’ll just hate me going off-script like this. She’s so excited to carve your nasty little heart out. But it’s fine. We’ll find the knife after we’ve buried you. Oooh, then we’ll make an event out of playing with your corpse.”
My nasty little heart feels like someone’s standing on it, and it doesn’t take long before I can’t keep myself upright anymore. My knees go out, and Poppy’s hand tightens around my throat as she guides me, too gently, to the pavement. She’s so much stronger than she looks. Black spots pop into my vision. I think about trying to push her away again but can’t seem to move at all anymore.
“If we had more time, I’d give you a proper send-off.” She sighs, nearly dreamy, and moves one hand from my throat to brush her knuckles against my cheek. “You don’t deserve a quick death. But there’s so much I need to do, and your guard dog’s already on my ass.”
I don’t have it in me to wonder what she’s talking about. I’m about to die. I’m going to suffocate here in the school parking lot, all because I decided to skip class. My eyes close once the black spots are all I can see anyway. What a dramatic after-school special.
Except I don’t die. Not yet.
In a painful rush, air refills my lungs. The only sound I can make is a choking scream as my chest threatens to crack open at the pressure. Poppy’s still kneeling over me, but she isn’t looking at me anymore. Her head is tilted toward the sky, where a flock of birds are now circling overhead.
“Vultures, Mountain? Really?” She growls, grinding her teeth and whipping her head in the direction of the school again. “So dramatic, and for what?”
“You hardly have room to talk.”
Blinking away tears, I twist my head in the direction of the voice. Willa Mae is standing a few feet from us, broad shoulders tensed, staring at Poppy with a mix of revulsion and rage.
“What are you wearing?”
Not the question I was expecting, but a fair one.
Poppy gasps, looking down at her outfit before shooting Willa Mae a glower. “It’s camp!”
“Mmm. Are you sure?”
I’m still trapped underneath the girl who is actively attempting to murder me.
Poppy leaps to her feet with shocking agility, and I roll away as quickly as I can, shuffling on my knees toward the nearest car. Hiding behind the oversized tire of a lifted Ford, I weigh my options. Run for the school? Run for the Piggy Wiggly? Which one’s more likely to get me killed? I don’t know, can’t make up my mind, and indecision keeps me frozen.
Willa Mae’s voice cuts through the panic. “Gem. Do you see the white Jeep five spots down?”
Huh?
I peer around the truck’s tailgate, blink down the row of cars. My teeth chatter when I force out, “Y-yes.”
“That’s mine. It’s unlocked. You’re going to get in it and go home. I left a spare key in the center console for you.”
That doesn’t—that doesn’t make any sense. Why would she have done that? How could she have known to?
But it makes as much sense as anything else. I force myself to move, to scramble toward the Jeep.
“You always have been an obedient bitch,” Poppy chides. “How long’s it gonna take you to realize they only keep you around to save their hide? Another hundred years? Another thousand?”
“Speaking of bitches, where’s your girlfriend?”
“On her way. I was planning to give her the Magician’s spine as a welcome-home present.”
“Romantic.”
Poppy giggles the most disturbing little giggle I’ve ever heard, like some kind of haunted baby doll.
My fingers curl around the driver’s-side handle of Willa Mae’s car. Before I can wrench the door open, ice-cold fingers curl around the back of my neck. Poppy tosses me, as if I don’t weigh over two hundred pounds, back to the ground.
Looking up at her sickly frame illuminated by the sun, I watch as the flock of vultures descend. They swarm her, sharp beaks striking out in precise attacks, ripping at her paper-thin flesh. It’s too much for my brain to process, the way they tear the skin off her bones in effortless strips, the way they bloody her in their choreographed attack.
And it happens so quickly. I can’t get myself to move, can only stare on in disbelief. Everything about this moment feels unreal. Am I dreaming? I can feel the ground beneath me, can move my body of my own accord, but I don’t feel like I’m awake.
These things can’t actually happen while I’m awake.
Somehow, worse than what’s being done to her body is her reaction to it. Poppy doesn’t seem to register the pain. Instead, with that inhuman speed, she snatches the birds from midair, hands tightening around their throats until they deflate. They don’t fly away, don’t try to save themselves, and keep going in for meat even as she picks them off, one by one. Within moments, she has a pile of dead vultures at her feet.
With blood dripping from an open gash on her forehead, painting the blue hearts around her eye a violent purple, she laughs again. “You’re going to have to do better than that.”
Willa Mae’s hands slide underneath my armpits and she puts me on my feet. “Get out of here. Now.”
Yes, ma’am. I clamber inside her car, slamming the door behind me. The spare key is exactly where she said it’d be, waiting in the center console. I slam it into the ignition, then jerk into reverse and stomp the gas. I need as much distance between me and these girls as possible, and I almost hit every other car in the lot to get it.
Just before pulling onto the main road, I glance in the rearview mirror for one last look at them. What I see doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be real. But then, neither can any of this.
One of the trees has moved. Its branches have stretched out from the tree line and into the parking lot. Their sharp ends are skewered through Poppy’s shoulders, wrists, and calves, lifting her off her feet, exposing bone and muscle around the wood. She’s suspended, a spread eagle, twenty feet off the ground, her streaming blood horribly red against her ghostly skin.
She’s still laughing.
4
TO SEE YOU WAS TO ABHOR YOU
You ever get behind the wheel of a car, and suddenly you’re somewhere else? You’ve driven several miles, but you don’t have any memory of the drive, and you’re not sure how you got there, and it’s terrifying because, holy shit, you were just behind the wheel, you could have killed someone?
I remember leaving the school parking lot, seeing Poppy’s body dangling in the tree behind me, and then … nothing. Nothing, until I’m pulling up to my house.
Poppy’s body.
There’s no way I actually saw that, right? None of what happened today is possible. And if it’s impossible, that means it all happened inside my head.
I press my fingertips against my throat, remembering the girl’s corpse-like hand. I couldn’t breathe while she was touching me, and I can’t breathe now. My mind races from one thought to another, flashing among gruesome images. Poppy, and Willa Mae, and the birds, and the blood.
There’s a ringing in my ears that doesn’t stop, that gets louder and louder until it drowns out even the sound of my struggle to breathe. Maybe it isn’t ringing at all. Maybe it’s screaming. Or worse—maybe it’s laughter.
I fall out of the car more than anything else. I can’t seem to see straight, like the world has gone tipped on its side, gone fuzzy at the edges, like I’m looking at everything through bad reception. After a few tries, I manage to stumble my way toward the house. I don’t make it inside, though. I collapse on the porch steps, slumping into a ball near the dirt, and press my face into my knees.
For years, I’ve worried there’s something really wrong with me. Only “worried” isn’t the right word. I’ve known there’s something wrong with me. Something in me is too broken, too ugly, too wrong. And I’ve tried to ignore it. I’ve sucked it up and done my best impersonation of Normal, always watching the people around me to figure out how to fool everyone into thinking I was one of them. But deep down I knew it was pointless. This day was inevitable. My human mask was always going to slip. I was always going to lose my grip on reality completely.
Just like my dad did.
I don’t hear the front door open, but I know it must have when Hank bumps up against my side, knocking his big-ass head into mine. He licks my cheek and it’s enough to drag me back into my body. I suck in a deep breath, lower lip trembling, and shove my shaking fingers into the thick, dirty white fur around his neck.
From behind us, my mother speaks. “The hell is going on? Whose car is that?”
“A friend’s.” Sure, let’s go with that. “I got sick. She let me take it.”
I nuzzle my face into Hank’s throat and my mom pauses for way too long before asking, “What kinda sick?”
Really not sure how to answer that one. I brush my thumb against Hank’s fuzzy ear and don’t say anything.
She clears her throat. “Seriously, Gem, you havin’ some kinda episode?”
That gets me to look at her.
My mother looks a lot like me, in all the ways that don’t matter. We share the same dark hair and rosy-brown skin, the same honeycomb eyes, the same high cheekbones and pointy noses and rectangular bodies.
In all the ways that do matter, we couldn’t be more different. She’s the kind of woman who strives to be perfectly put together. A ten-step skin-care routine, a box of dye to touch up her roots anytime gray starts to peek through, outfits put together with the sole intention of being forgettably pretty. She hates attention in the same way I need it to survive.
We both care too much about what other people think. I don’t know how we can wear it in the exact opposite ways.
She’s looking at me critically. One hand fiddles with the plain silver necklace she’s always wearing.
“I’m not having an episode,” I mumble. “I’m fine.”
I am probably having an episode. I am not fine.
“Mhm.” She raises one of her overplucked eyebrows. “You been takin’ your meds?”
When Enzo asks if I’ve taken my meds, it feels like someone tugging a blanket over me when I’m tired. I know he asks because he loves me, because he wants to make sure I’m taking care of myself. Because he wants me safe, and comfortable, and if he isn’t around to see to that himself, he needs to know I’m doing what I can on my own.
When Mom asks if I’ve taken my meds, it feels like sitting trial. She’s accusing me of a crime, and she is my judge, jury, and executioner.
She was the one who demanded I start seeing professionals last year, when things started to get … bad. She’d caught me with stolen pregnancy tests and Plan B more than once, I almost had to repeat sophomore year because I was sleeping all day instead of going to school, and when she locked away the razors to keep new scars from appearing on my skin, I started using needles to poke holes in my face instead.
So, okay. Maybe help was warranted.
But I refused to keep seeing the first therapist after our third session, when she let it slip how she thought trans people were a sign of Armageddon. My mother yanked me out of the care of the second, once she started to suspect I was too interested in our appointments—and she doesn’t even know I have pictures of his dick on my phone, or that our first session ended with his hand up my skirt.
When we couldn’t find anyone else, she sent me to a psychiatrist, hoping meds could fix me. He agreed I was depressed, conceded maybe I could have ADHD, but refused to slap a more aggressive label on me. Despite my family history and my mother’s insistence, the kind of diagnosis she thinks I need is usually reserved for people older and worse off. Or at least not as good at masking.
To hear her tell it, she’s advocating for her kid, trying to take care of me when she knows something is wrong, and no one is listening to her. I’m pretty sure she just wants to prove I’m like my dad so she can get rid of me the way she did him.
Still, the meds have helped. I haven’t cut myself in seven months, and I’ve been doing so good at getting up and getting my ass to school. And the compulsion to get validation by sleeping with anyone who looks at me … has lessened, a little.
But pills can’t fix what’s really wrong. My mother’s right. And I really hate that she’s going to get what she wants.
“For fuck’s sake.” I roll my eyes, indignation hot enough to stop my hands from shaking. “Yes, I’ve been taking my meds. Even crazy people get stomach bugs sometimes.”
She narrows her eyes. She doesn’t like me cursing in front of her. It offends her deep-rooted Southern sensibilities. But of all the hills to die on, that one’s really not worth it. “Sure was nice of your friend to let you borrow her car.”
Huh? Oh.
Oh my god. My mother thinks I stole the car.
I cannot do this right now.
She sighs as I move past her and into the house, careful to twist my shoulder so it doesn’t touch hers, like physical contact might burn us both.
Hank shuffles into my bedroom just before I slam the door closed. I flick the lock, too, though it’s only symbolic. My mother has taken a screwdriver to my doorknob more than once, and she’d have no problem doing it again. The stubborn illusion of privacy is better than nothing.
My head hits the pillow, my eyes on the ceiling fan whirring quietly overhead.
Okay.
All right.
There are two options here.
One—I have finally, and undeniably, lost my shit. I have tumbled so far over the deep end that there is no getting my feet back on land, not on my own. My weird-ass dreams have now spiraled into full-blown hallucinations, and either I invented Willa Mae and Poppy entirely, or I invented our encounters. Either way, I’m now officially a danger to myself and others. There’s no more avoiding telling people about my psychosis. I have to tell someone because I have to get help. And maybe, with a different kind of medication, or more treatment, I’ll get my head on straight.
Two—I haven’t invented anyone at all. Willa Mae is a real person who really came to Gracie looking for me. She knows me, somehow, from something I don’t remember. And she knew Poppy was going to show up.
Oh, and there’s something important about a lost knife. Maybe even the same one I used to kill the Sun in my dream last night. Which maybe wasn’t a dream at all.
There is no best-case scenario. There is only one terrible possibility and another.
The fan continues to spin. Warm air wafts against my face, making strands of hair tickle my cheeks. I don’t know how long I lie still.
At some point, my phone is vibrating in my hand. Enzo’s face on the screen tells me I have an incoming FaceTime call.
Shit. I forgot I asked him to call me.
Obviously, I shouldn’t answer. There’s more than too much going on. I don’t have the time or the spoons to have a conversation with Enzo today.
I sit up, struggling to find the best angle that doesn’t read I’m in the middle of a breakdown, as the call starts.
“Well, hello, darling. It’s nice to see you’re still breathing. Your last message was awfully desolate.”
As soon as he speaks—even if he has no idea how bad the timing on that joke is—I can’t help but smile.
I really like looking at Enzo. Sharp-jawed and soft-mouthed, with cool beige skin and eyes that could be made of fallen autumn leaves. That swoopy hair always falling across the lenses of his glasses, this week dyed a deep storm-cloud gray. His button nose, slightly upturned. The way he dresses like a character in a children’s book, all bright colors and flashy accessories and a hint of glitter. He’s a lot to look at. And it’s nice.
Today, he’s got beaded earrings in, probably handmade by his mom. She came to the U.S. from Brazil long before he was born, and his dad grew up on a farm in Canada. How they all ended up where they are, I don’t know.
They’re really incredible people, though. Supportive and kind and I’ve never actually known anyone but Enzo who seriously likes their parents.
It’s nice. He deserves that. Of all people, he deserves it.
“Aw, babe, I didn’t know you cared so much.” I compartmentalize because I have to. I shove Poppy and Willa Mae and knives and vultures and glowing skin out of my head. I fix my human mask in place.
I’ve gotten so good at pretending to be someone else, it’s easier than being me. I just hate when I have to perform for Enzo.
